


usher, part three

by potato_writes



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (sort of), Alternate Universe, F/M, Reincarnation, also there's ghosts because this wasn't confusing enough already, character death but also not really, there's no incest here cersei and jaime are just regular siblings, this is so confusing i'm so sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 22:02:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29848140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potato_writes/pseuds/potato_writes
Summary: “Imagine this,” Cersei says, gesturing broadly.*four friends meet up in a bar one evening to tell a tale that is much more than it appears to be.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 5
Kudos: 17
Collections: Jaime x Brienne March Madness





	usher, part three

**Author's Note:**

> listen i am so, so sorry about this. 
> 
> the jb monthly madness prompt of supernatural elements apparently led me to finally write the ghost quartet au that literally no one asked for. tagging this one was a TIME, and i still don't think i really hit some of the big things here so i'll say this: there is character death in here. the characters are also all alive at the end. yes, i know that's confusing as fuck, but this is ghost quartet we're talking about so let's just embrace how confusing it is.
> 
> if you're going 'potato, what even IS ghost quartet?', i'm here to tell you that it's probably the weirdest musical i've ever heard of. i won't bother to explain it because i really can't, but if you're interested in being very, very confused for an hour and a half, it's up in full on [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJSaEJm8pCE)! everyone say thank you to dave malloy.
> 
> it's worth noting that i barely edited this because i was afraid i'd make it even more confusing, so any mistakes in here are because of that. thank you for reading, and hopefully you're not too confused??

“Imagine this,” Cersei says, gesturing broadly. 

Jaime immediately rolls his eyes, turning away from his sister to send a pointed look to Brienne. She shakes her head, her hand shifting to cover his even as a warning glitters in her eyes. His words die on the tip of his tongue, and he returns his attention to Cersei, now spilling whiskey on the floor as she jabs a finger at Jorah.

“ _Imagine this_ ,” she says again, her words slurred from too much alcohol—an ailment all four of them have fallen prey to, at this point. “Close to two hundred years ago. A manor, set on the edge of town, with shuttered windows and a foreboding air. The lord and lady, pacing the floor, alone, sleepless, afraid. A son fled, a daughter dead, and a storm looming on the horizon.”

This time, Brienne’s death grip on his hand is not enough to stifle Jaime’s groan. “Really?” he asks his sister, wincing as his wife’s hand tightens around his. “Is it not enough you came up with that story where _you and I_ were apparently lovers? You have to keep torturing this fictional version of Brienne and I as well?”

“I think I came up with that, actually,” Jorah mumbles, but he’s ignored as the siblings begin to argue, Cersei slamming her glass down so she can gesture even more expansively at her brother. Brienne sighs heavily and shakes her head again, well accustomed to the twins and their bickering by now. Years of knowing them—and her eventual marriage to Jaime—have left her with far too much knowledge of how these arguments go, and how they’ll inevitably end.

“Alright, enough,” she says eventually, silencing the siblings almost immediately. “Tell your story. I want to be back home before morning comes.”

Jaime huffs and slumps back in his chair, ceding the floor to his sister. His hand remains joined with Brienne’s, and Jorah sends a longing look at their clasped hands before staring out the window and taking a long drink. He sets the glass down a little too hard, and the amber liquid sloshes up the sides, dripping down onto the tabletop.

Cersei smiles as her audience settles, lifting her glass again in a mocking toast and laughing when her brother sticks his tongue out at her. Then she stills, raising her head and gazing at some far-away thing only she can see, and a heavy silence falls over their corner of the bar. “1873,” she murmurs. “Autumn is turning into winter. A young girl lies dead in the vault below her family’s manor, her brother runs away to King’s Landing on his father’s advice. As night falls and the storm sweeps in, matters are about to come to a head…”

***

Wind howls about the shuttered windows as the lord paces the floor, his eyes darting about the room with every step. Dark circles frame his eyes, and his gaze is wary, haunted. At times, he pauses and glances down at the plain wood floor, frowning as if he hears some sound below, in the depths of the manor. The raging storm that draws ever nearer masks most other sounds, but if one were to listen closely they might hear the same voice he does: a woman’s, raging with bitter fury as she screams her agony up through stone and wood alike.

He has been hearing this voice for days now, and is still unable to make it stop. Nor will he be able to, for the voice is not his to control, not in life, and especially not in death.

The lord is what one might call handsome, tall and proud and golden even in the flickering candlelight. He is weary, though, with a slump to his shoulders that had not been present less than a year before this day, before the life he had lived fell to pieces around him and he was left here, waiting for the last part of it to crumble at last.

And tonight, that time has come.

The voice cuts off abruptly as the door opens and his wife steps in, tentative and slow, her hands shaking as she closes the door behind. He strides over to her immediately, catching her by the hands and drawing her to sit beside him on their bed. Neither of them speak for a long time, merely breathing the other in and reveling in the knowledge they have lived another day—not yet knowing it is the night that shall be their downfall.

The lady of the manor is taller than her husband, broader too. Her eyes glitter like the finest of jewels, and they are gems her husband prizes above all the other riches he has inherited. Many of those who do not know them have presumed many things about their marriage—that it is false, or unconsummated, or that there is little love between them—but neither lord nor lady care, and even at the end cannot be brought down by the things the world does not care to understand. 

“Tell me a story,” she whispers at last, pressing her forehead to his and letting her eyes flutter closed. “Drown out the voices, if only for a little while.”

He smiles, a little sadly, and draws them both down until they’re lying on the bed, entwined together until it’s impossible to imagine there was ever a time they weren’t like this. They both know all too well how little time they have left together; it is imperative that they savour what they can keep of each other while they still can, before the owner of the voice finally unleashes her anger.

“Imagine another world,” the lord whispers into his wife’s hair as she wraps her arms around him and pulls him closer. “A better world, where illness is easily treated and we could travel from place to place in an instant. In the King’s Landing of _this_ world, there is a platform, where fast trains come to a halt and passengers embark and disembark. On the platform, there is a woman, staring down at an object in her hand. It is glowing…”

***

The woman stands on the subway platform, her eyes fixed on her phone. She does not expect her train to arrive for a while yet, and so she is indulging in a game, a favourite of hers that keeps her entertained on long journeys to the most distant reaches of Westeros and Essos. She has just come from a business meeting, and her while-blonde hair is still pinned up, strands escaping the neat bun after a long day of courting investors. Her attention is focused on her game, and so she does not notice the man standing near the wall, his eyes studying her with a sad gaze.

The man does not yet know what he has to do, but he will soon enough. 

He takes a step forward, his footfall echoing loudly on the silent platform. She does not turn, but for a moment her brow furrows.

(In the manor, the lord looks up, a furrow appearing between his brows as a footstep sounds in the house below.)

She progresses to the next level, prepares to battle her next opponent. This one is a bear, looming and awful and roaring silently on the screen, and a pulse races through her—a memory that is not hers, but had been, once. 

The man goes pale as she clicks a menu, selects a sword from her list of weapons. “The train is coming,” he whispers, as if trying to stop what is to come, but it is futile. She cannot hear, and he cannot stop, no matter how hard he tries.

In the game, she moves her avatar and strikes the bear, hard. On screen, the animal shrieks, lurching backwards and hissing towards her. On the platform, the man stumbles, falls, clutching at his side and gritting his teeth as if in terrible pain. He does not make a sound, and she does not notice, too engrossed in her next move.

She has no reason to expect the danger that awaits her. Not on the subway platform, where she has been a thousand times before without incident.

(A shriek echoes through the manor, and both the lord and lady sit up, staring at each other with terror in their eyes. The knowledge that eluded them before is all too clear now—this is when it ends, and there is no hope of stopping what has already been set in motion, long before any of them were born.)

[In the bar, Cersei bows her head, a single tear trickling down her cheek as her three companions watch. “This has all happened before,” she says quietly, draining her glass and carefully setting it back on the bartop. “The cycle continues, and they are not the ones fortunate enough to break it.”]

(The lord leaps to his feet as a great crash sounds, his eyes going wide as he looks about the room. One by one, the candles go out, leaving them immersed in total darkness until the door flies open. Light spills in from the hall, illuminating a figure standing in the doorway. The lady scrambles up to join her husband as the figure steps forward, her eyes filling with tears at the sight before them. 

The figure is a young woman—a girl, really—with long limp hair that might have been golden, once. She is pale and thin, unnaturally so, and her eyes are sunken and glazed over with the hazy unseeing of death. Blood stains her tattered robe, and her hands stretch out, claw-like as she stumbles towards them. 

She had been their daughter, when she lived, a joyful child with a wild imagination who they had adored completely. Now, they are petrified by the sight of her, desperately looking for some sign of the little girl they loved so much in the, the _thing_ now shambling forward, shoving her father aside and throwing her mother back before pouncing.

Even as the living dead girl screams, clawing forward and tearing her mother’s heart from her chest, they cannot strike back, cannot help hoping that their daughter will appear before them again and that all this will simply be a terrible nightmare that passes when morning comes. And the worst of it is this: they might have been right, were it not for the vengeful words of long ago, the snarling curse of a woman wronged by those she believed loved her, echoing through time and space to strike here and now—and, simultaneously, in another time and place.)

[In the bar, Brienne shudders. “This is awful,” she hisses at Cersei as Jaime’s other hand shifts to cover their joined ones. “Why are you telling us this?”

Cersei meets her goodsister’s gaze calmly, a pained gleam in her green eyes. “Don’t you remember?” she asks, spreading her hands wide and watching Brienne's eyes widen with realization as she slowly nods. “It’s as I said: this has all happened before.”]

On the platform, the woman continues her game. The bear is roaring, leaping forward and breathing great bursts of flame at her avatar, and she keeps raising her sword, keeps striking and never notices how the man behind her flinches at every blow. 

A low hum runs along the tracks, and the man stills, his eyes going wide. “The train is coming,” he says again, louder, but still his words do not reach her ears, and still his limbs jerk forward against his will, possessed by the promise of a thousand years before, by an old debt, finally ready to be collected.

He is pushing her before he truly realizes what he is doing, and his scream of horror is drowned out by the sound of the train rushing in, too close, too fast, too little time left to undo what was set in motion all those years ago.

On the track, the woman looks up, scanning her surroundings slowly, as if she has all the time in the world left. _In the manor, the lady flinches at the footstep echoing below, memory washing over her as she savours this last embrace with her husband._

She gazes at the train as it rushes toward her, at the bright light dazzling her and forcing her to look away. She turns to the walls, one hand reaching for the ladder, for her way back up to the platform. Then she stops, looks back at the train, her head tilted to the side. _The shriek echoes through the manor and she sits up, looking over at her husband as he pales even further. What they had feared for days now is finally coming to pass, and resignation settles in her expression even as terror seizes her limbs and leaves her stiff and still beside him._

Her eyes lift until she can see the platform: the man, bent double and weeping, his clothes torn as if struck a dozen times by a sword, a woman, golden-haired and green-eyed, standing horrified in the distance, a camera clutched in her hands. The woman on the tracks smiles, slow and steady—almost _joyful_ , an odd expression for a woman facing her last moments in the world. 

But she knows the woman on the platform, from another life lived long ago. She knows why this has all come to pass, unlike the man who pushed her or the lord and lady in the manor or even the woman who was once her sister, her mother, her daughter, her lover, a thousand things in a thousand different lives where all four players became intrinsically bound together. 

(The living dead girl vanishes as quickly as she had arrived, and the lord rushes to his wife’s side, tears streaming down his face as he looks down at her body. A smile graces her lips, her blue eyes still half-open, her last thought of that fantastical better world, one where none of this happened and they broke the cycle of vengeance and death and lamenting at long last.)

She tilts her head back, ignoring the train that grows ever closer, and _remembers._ In the last moment before the train strikes her, as the camera flashes from the platform, her eyes close and she breathes in deeply, recalling every moment that brought them here.

And then the train arrives, and she remembers no more.

***

The bar is silent as Cersei finishes her tale. Jorah grabs his glass and takes another long drink, his eyes glazed over and unsteady when he finishes. Jaime clutches Brienne’s hand as if it were a lifeline, the terror of losing her as he had in those other lives keeping him glued to her side. Brienne herself is very still for a long moment, before she smiles with the serene calm of the woman on the tracks.

“And so the cycle continues,” she murmurs, ignoring Jaime’s frown, Jorah’s furrowed brow. Only Cersei seems to understand what she means, for she nods slowly, a matching smile spreading across her own face. “We have been spared from the worst of it, but there is no guarantee that our children won’t be.”

Realization dawns on Jaime’s face, but Jorah continues to frown. “What do you mean?” he asks, looking from one friend to the other. “It’s only a story.”

Brienne shakes her head with the infinite wisdom of a thousand lives, a keen glint appearing in her eyes. “No,” she tells him, looking to her goodsister, then her husband, then back at Jorah. “No, it is so much more than a story.” 

**Author's Note:**

> the explanation of 'wtf is happening here' would be longer than the fic itself if i added in the end notes, but if you really want to know come find me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/potatothecat) and i will do my best. also i'm really sorry about how weird this is. it probably wasn't a great idea to take a song from near the end of the show, but it fit the 'supernatural elements theme best so here we are.
> 
> there's a longer version of this au that exists in my head, but i probably won't write it because it might be even MORE confusing than this. also i have a wip consuming all my free time right now so that wouldn't go too well anyways.


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